Google+ Project Adds ‘Angry Birds’ & More Games

Written by Jessica Smith on Aug. 13, 2011

The Google+ project, which is still in invite-only beta phase, has introduced a new button for games on the increasingly popular social media website. Although it was highly speculated for a while that the introduction was inevitable in order to keep visitors on the site, and to offer an alternative to simply connecting with friends through the stream, the line-up of games was officially unveiled earlier this week.

The introduction of the games was Google’s response to Facebook’s line-up, which according to research firm eMarketer, targets more than 200 million users and brings in a revenue of over $500 million per year.

Although Google didn’t introduce games such as Farmville or Cityville, they did introduce Zynga Poker and Bejewled Blitz, which are both available on Facebook. However, the line-up wasn’t just a knock-off of its competitor, as they did add the ever-popular Android game, Angry Birds.

“Today we’re adding games to Google+.” the official announcement on the Google blog said. “With the Google+ project, we want to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to the web. But sharing is about more than just conversations. We want to make playing games online just as fun, and just as meaningful, as playing in real life.”

Although the games were rolled out earlier this week, much like Facebook, the new feature will be rolled out slowly, though most people we’ve talked to already have the feature available.

While the introduction of games may be a welcome to many users, if you’re one of those people that are constantly annoyed with your friends playing games on Facebook and seeing the messages about bragging about it on your feed, Google notes that it could be easily ignored through their service. “If you’re not interested in games, it’s easy to ignore them,” they said. “Your stream will remain focused on conversations with the people you care about.”

Other games include City of Wonder, Diamond Dash, Dragons of Atlantis, Wild Ones, Crime City, and Dragon Age Legends are available, too.